Some people appear to be hopped up on happy pills, being oblivious to any bad events going on around them. Others are all too quick to express their disgust at anything that doesn’t go exactly their way.
Could it be that the healthiest emotional mix is somewhere between the extremes? Say, four parts good feelings to one part bad feelings, shaken not stirred, and served with a twist of lime?
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When I’ve got a case of the blues, I sometimes cheer myself up by buying a new book or two on Amazon. Perhaps you have some similar habits: you know what cheers you up, whether it’s going shopping, eating a giant bag of chips, opening a bottle of wine, lighting up…
The problem is, a lot of these little habits don’t really cheer us up, and, over time, they can have a very negative effect on our health, our wallet, or both.
These are some perennially popular ones – and reasons why they’re not a good idea:
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Depression is a difficult illness for even the most iron-willed of individuals. Whether you’re clinically depressed or just in a rut, depression can make basic tasks like cleaning the house, taking a shower and even getting out of bed incredibly difficult and physically and mentally draining. It is important to stay motivated to continue to live your life and work towards feeling better, even when you’re at your lowest point. Here are some simple ways that you can motivate yourself on a daily basis:
• Don’t be too harsh with yourself. It’s going to take time to get things done like you used to and to feel like your old self. Changes are not going to happen overnight, so don’t be overly critical of yourself if you make mistakes or don’t get as much done as you’d like. You’re having a hard enough time without getting on your own case.
• Be realistic. Making a laundry list of things to do is a surefire way to set yourself up for failure. Start with small positive changes and work from there. If you’re not realistic you’ll just end up frustrated and more depressed.
• Surround yourself with people. While you may just want to curl up and be alone, this isn’t the best or easiest route for you when you’re depressed. Having others around you to give you a helping hand, talk to you and provide you with inspiration is important to feeling better and getting back into the swing of things, even if you feel like you just want to shut everyone out.
• Move around. Lying in bed all day or hunkering down on the couch isn’t going to do much but give you more time to feel bad about things. When you force yourself to get up, even if only for a short walk or to tend to some plants outside, you’ll be helping yourself feel better physically and mentally.
• Start a project. For many, this may seem like that last thing they want to do but an enjoyable project can give you something to concentrate on that will bring your thoughts away from depression and give you something to feel proud of when you’re done.
• Make a plan. If even the smallest tasks seem like a chore, start small with planning out what you’re going to do each day. In the morning, write down the things you’d like to accomplish and in the evening, go back and check off what you did. This can help you regain your sense of control over your life at a time when it seems the most chaotic.
Recovering from depression is a hard road, but with some planning and slow but steady progress you may be able to start feeling optimistic about your life again. For a list of more great depression resources, click here.
Meredith Walker is a guest blogger for PickTheBrain.com. She writes about online nursing programs and welcomes your feedback.
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One tenet you’ll often hear in personal development circles is that “it’s good to talk” or “a burden shared is a burden halved”. Sometimes, though, when feeling down, you’ll talk to a spouse, parent or friend about how you feel … and you’ll find that you’re just dragging yourself into a deeper and blacker mood.
So why is it that talking doesn’t always help? And how can you help someone who wants to talk to you about their woes?
Talking Often Focuses on the Problem
Perhaps you’ve been feeling a bit down recently. Maybe you have bleak days when it seems like you’ve lost your direction in life. You might talk to a friend about it, detailing all the things you wish you could do (if only you had the money, or the time, or the skills), and endlessly dissecting everything that’s wrong in your life.
Talking about everything that’s wrong just reinforces your focus on things that aren’t currently working. If you’re already in a bad mood, it’ll send you spiralling further and further down. Have you ever had the experience of “working yourself into a state” – feeling a bit anxious or angry about something, and dwelling on it until the molehill becomes a mountain?
Tip for Helping: If someone wants to talk to you about everything that’s wrong in their life, encourage them to find something that’s good. Ask “what’s been better recently?” This is a technique that the coach Mark Forster uses and explains in his book How to Make Your Dreams Come True.
Talking May Mean Saying Something You Regret
When you’re in a bad mood, or feeling very fed up about something, it’s easy to think that your state of mind represents your real feelings about a job, relationship, or life situation. The truth is, how you feel when in a bad mood is no more “real” or objective than the way you feel when everything’s going swimmingly.
One danger of trying to talk through your bad moods is that you’ll end up saying something you’ll regret. Perhaps you’ll think, at the time, that you’re telling your friend a few home truths … but later you’ll realise that you don’t really think that of them at all. Maybe you’ll tell colleagues that you hate your job, despite finding it perfectly pleasant most of the time: do you want your words making their way through the office grapevine to your boss?
Tip for Helping: Try to treat anything that someone says in anger, or while upset, as something that they don’t really mean. If you do end up saying something that you regret, don’t be too hesitant to apologize once you’ve calmed down.
Talking Only Works if Someone Listens
Unfortunately, most people in the world are not good listeners – and I include myself here. When listening to someone, it’s easy to let your mind wander, or to stop concentrating on their words in order to think about what you’re going to say next. We often don’t even hear the actual words that are said – let alone the intention behind them, and the wealth of stuff that is implied.
You may get frustrated when you talk about your problems because people just don’t seem to understand. Perhaps they brush off the major issues as unimportant, and attend to the minor ones; perhaps they offer advice when all you wanted was someone to listen patiently. Maybe they’ve completely missed the point.
Tip for Helping: Learn how to listen actively. If you’re seeking help, try going to a life coach, counsellor or someone else who has been trained to listen and to help you work through problems.
Do you find that talking to someone when you’re in a bad mood helps you to feel better – or does it tend to make things worse? Have you been able to help people by listening to them when they’re going through a bleak spell?
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Everyone smiles. From industrialized nations to remote tribes, studies have shown that smiling is universal. Even more stunning is that people from all over the world smile the same way. Even blind children begin to smile without seeing others smile. It’s ingrained in the very code that makes us human.
Although smiling comes in many forms, most are actually fake. In fact, there is only one smile that is genuine. When the corners of the mouth go up, the eyes narrow slightly creating crow’s feet, and the upper half of the cheeks rise, you are experiencing the Duchenne Smile, named by Paul Ekman, an emeritus professor of psychology at the University of California at San Francisco after Guillaume-Benjamin Duchenne, the French physiologist who first studied the muscle that surrounds the eye in 1862.
The Duchenne smile is the one true smile that is a direct result of feeling happy. But, how do we FEEL happy? When we receive or give a gift, or see our children smile and laugh, physiological changes take place. Our hearts beat faster and the flow of blood increases. Skin temperature rises, which makes the skin slightly damper and our fingers tremble. The experience of a compliment or gift is a trigger. The trigger sets off changes in the body, which signal the brain to feel happy.
Although this may sound odd at first, try forcing yourself to feeling happy when your muscles are tense, your face is frowned and your brow furrowed. The involuntary emotions cause our body reaction to signal our brain, which means that happiness arises as much from our body as it does from our thoughts.
The emotions associated with feeling happy are involuntarily controlled by our automatic nervous system. This is why we cannot simply decide to be happy by influencing involuntary body function. It is impossible for us to command our blood to flow faster. We do, however, have the ability to bypass the automatic nervous system. We have the ability to smile, even without a trigger.
Ekman’s work corroborated that if feelings can come from the body, then happiness can come from a genuine Duchenne smile. Ekman trained his subjects to control the movement of the muscles that surround the eye to achieve the Duchenne smile. The result was a signal of happiness without a trigger sent to the brain thereby proving that happiness doesn’t flow in just one direction, and smiling alone can make us happy.
I suggest that we take the work of Ekman to the next level. If the bodily movement of smiling can make our brains experience feelings of happiness, then why not use the smile as a trigger for others. What you put out into the world comes back to you. The next time you are introduced to someone, just give your first name and watch what happens. More likely than not, they will return the introduction with their first name. Offer your first and last name, and you will receive the same. Try it with a smile. I’m sure you will find a smile in return. This effect can influence your happiness and the feelings of everyone you come into contact with throughout your day. By smiling more and passing it along, you truly put the Duchenne smile effect into action.
Tommy Galan is a guest blogger for PickTheBrain. He is the author of HappyUniverse.com, a blog dedicated to designing happy lives through exciting goals and healthy lifestyle. A few of his many adventures include performing on Broadway, earning a Juris Doctorate, finishing marathons, and traveling the world. He lives in New York City with his wife and son.
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Do any of these gloomy thoughts sound familiar? It’s likely they do. The occasional case of the blues is perfectly normal, but that doesn’t make dealing with it any easier. If you allow them to, negative thoughts can fester and lead to serious depression. That’s why it’s important to take action early to bust yourself out of a slump.
While these suggestions won’t eliminate your problems, they can help you break a negative thought pattern and stop feeling depressed.
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How many times have you started a new activity (such as a personal project or exercise routine) with a burst of enthusiasm, only to see that initial momentum evaporate? This often leads to depression and causes us to give up prematurely. I’ve experienced this letdown dozens of times myself. But fortunately, with a bit of thought and reflection you can turn this negative emotion around.
The key to harnessing your emotions is understanding them. The natural pattern of human emotion is peaks and valleys. When we start a new project we’re filled with tremendous optimism. All we can think about is the expected benefits, and since we haven’t started yet, we aren’t aware of the difficulties involved. This natural high causes a surge of mental and physical activity. The peak is a great thing because the energy boost gets projects off the ground. If you’re a creative type like me, you know that this period is euphoric. You feel like nothing can stop you.
The downside of this surge of energy is that it inevitably ends. Exerting large amounts of energy wears you down, and after the initial optimism wears off we feel extremely tired. However high you started off, you fall down just as low. This causes a loss of confidence. The combination of fatigue, scant results, and an awareness of impending adversity makes us want to give up. From personal experience I’ve learned a few ways to hold strong against negativity.
Emotions, by nature, lose their power when we understand them. Prove this to yourself. Next time you get angry, take a moment to reflect on the reason behind the emotion. When I step back and reflect, it’s easy to see that my anger is caused by insecurity/selfishness/jealousy etc. After I understand the cause my anger fades away.
The same technique applies to a loss of motivation. Instead of giving into negativity, step back and analyze. Look at the causes. Are you tired, burned out, disappointed by the results? Are these feelings justified, or are they a by product of a low point in the emotional spectrum?
To illustrate these ideas, I’ll use my most recent project as an example, the creation of this site. When I launched Pick the Brain it took an enormous amount of effort. I was completely new to blogging, web design, and traffic building so there was a steep learning curve. Writing new posts, setting up the site, and trying to build traffic took up nearly all my free time. After about three weeks I was completely burned out. I got depressed and started to question if the site was worth the effort. I wasn’t seeing any returns and I started to find enormous faults in my writing and the purpose of the site. There were moments when I was resigned to failure.
One reason I was able to overcome this loss of motivation is that I prepared myself for a letdown. Beforehand, I researched blogging and learned that it generally takes 9-12 months before a site begins to see significant traffic. Knowing that my lack of success was perfectly normal helped me get over it. The same is true for other endeavors. If you know losing 20 pounds in a month is unrealistic, you’ll be able to accept losing only 5 more easily.
I also knew my own emotions and was prepared for the initial emotional peak to pass. When I was first inspired to launch a website, my expectations were through the roof. Dreams of AdSense revenue danced in my head and I pictured throngs of loyal readers as if they already existed. But because I understand my emotional pattern, I realized this optimism would give way to depression. In the back of my mind, I foresaw the impending motivational battle, and when it came I was ready.
The passing of the emotional peak is a blessing in disguise because it allows us to reevaluate our plans from a fresh perspective. At first we are blinded by our own optimism. When we lose our motivation we can see gaping holes our in plan. We can either get down on ourselves and give up, or we can use this negative emotion to discover our faults and correct them. After I pulled myself out of the motivational cellar, I went back to all the negatives thoughts I’d had and applied them to improving the site. Having a pessimistic attitude opened my eyes. It made me realistic about my abilities and expectations. Emotional valleys bring us back to reality. Without them we’d be raving lunatics with unlimited self-confidence.
Use a loss of motivation as an opportunity to reconsider what your motivation really is. One reason I lost motivation is that I became too concerned with the financial aspect of blogging and lost sight of the real reason I started: sharing my passion for self improvement and the pursuit of happiness. When I realigned my motivation with my passion, the lack of results didn’t matter. My motivation returned because I realized connecting with people through my writing is an end in itself. Even if this site never makes I dime, sharing my ideas and experiences to help other people is worth the effort.
In truth, sometimes giving up is the right decision. If you started doing something for the wrong reasons you’ll likely lose your motivation. This is a good thing. It allows us to see what really motivates us. In these cases, the best choice is to move on to a new endeavor. Don’t fight self doubt, use it for your benefit.
Dealing with emotional highs and lows is an experience common to all people. We generally accept our emotions as beyond our control. They are powerful and mysterious and appear quite irrational. But if we contemplate our emotions, if we explore the inner workings of our minds, we find that like all things, emotions obey the law of cause and effect. Armed with this knowledge, we can continue to allow our emotions to dominate our lives, or we can use them to our benefit.
Don’t be surprised by a loss of motivation and don’t be disappointed by it. Understand it as natural effect of the human mind, and utilize this knowledge of self to make your emotions work for you.
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